124: Could A Podcast Work For Your Ministry? It’s Easier Than You Think | with Tim Hull

From sermons to faith conversations, podcasts can be a great medium to build stronger connections and deeper learning. 

Listen in to this interview with Tim Hull, owner of Sonimoprhic, as he shares his experience helping smaller churches expand their ministry impact with podcasting.

We’re sharing podcast ideas for:

• Easier replay listening of missed sermons
• Sustaining community between annual women’s retreats or youth camps
• Seasonal podcasts to build connection before and after shared events
• Faith conversations across generations
• Follow up connection after Vacation Bible School or family outreach

Connect with Tim Hull:
https://sonimorphic.com/
https://ministriesthatpodcast.captivate.fm/

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Transcript

Laurie Acker: 0:01

Hey, this is Laurie Acker. Welcome to the small church ministry podcast. Hey, everybody, welcome to the small church ministry podcast, we've got another episode with another really cool interview coming up. Tim Hall is joining us today to talk about podcasts and why we should care about this in small churches. And so I'm gonna let Tim just jump right in, introduce yourself, Tim. And tell us why like people listening need to hear what you have to say.

Tim Hull: 0:37

Yeah, so I've been doing podcasting been in the podcast production round for about a decade, helping people with their podcasts. And I grew up in a small church, or what I considered a small churches around 150. At least during the summer, it was in it was in a neighboring town to a college. So the the church doubled in size during high school. But normally it was about 150. And that's where I learned about Jesus, you know, grew up, I mean, we, we, I went there, since we moved to Ohio, back when I was I think I was two. So we went to the same church until I graduated, college just about, and yet, I, part of that I got involved in sound and and did some small podcasting type stuff. Back before it was really a thing that people did a whole lot just helped. I was interested in this kind of thing. And so I helped people, I helped our youth pastor record the messages that he gave, and, and helped out with some other recordings and running sound and whatnot. But yeah, so I've been doing podcasts production of some nature for professionally, at least for for a decade, and been doing it longer than that for has a volunteer or in the local church. So that's a little bit about me.

Laurie Acker: 2:01

That's so cool. Now I have to say, when I started our podcast, and my daughter said, You need to have a podcast, my mind was like, overwhelmed. Oh, my gosh, what goes into it? And I think about small churches. And because I'm in one, and obviously, this is what I do. I'm relating to 1000s of small churches all the time, and I can already hear their brains kind of exploding with tech production. One more thing, why would I do that? How hard is that going to be? Before we get into kind of I know, you're going to talk about how much easier it is than most people think. But before we get into that, why? Why would a small church even think about adding one more thing? Because we're already struggling with streaming services? And, you know, having enough tech volunteers? Why should a small church even think about having a podcast?

Tim Hull: 2:48

Yeah, so podcasting is an interesting medium, and that compared to other mediums like social media, or YouTube, people spend more time with a podcast. And so that's why I think it's so valuable. It's more relational than, then you necessarily think about, I mean, when you think about podcasts, you don't necessarily think relationships, but you're spending time with people. Buzzsprout says that most episodes are between 20 to 40 minutes, and people consume episodes of podcast at roughly about 60 to 80%. And so if you compare that to how much time somebody might spend with a social post, or with a YouTube video that are, you know, the sweet spot of a YouTube video is five to 12 minutes. So people are actually spending more time with you as a listening to a podcast. And so with that, if you have a podcast, you are by, by default, creating relationships with people that are putting your voice in their ears. And so that's the value of it. And really, like you were saying, and we can dig into this more to it's it's not the barrier to entry to get started with a podcast is pretty low these days. It used to be, you know, a decade ago, you had to really figure out year and how do I put this online so other people can find it? And how do I share that with other people. And with the technology these days, it's so much easier. And for small churches, most small churches are going to be I have a niche that they're they're diving into. And so with that, there's there's the opportunity there to take what you're already doing, and record it or if it's already recorded, then take that recording, and just make it available to your congregation to people in your community, or whoever might stumble across it as you share it online. I'm

Laurie Acker: 4:39

excited to actually talk about some of the equipment stuff because honestly, I think most small churches have already have what they need as far as equipment and technology to do it. But you're saying do take what you have and put it online. So for a small church, what does that look like content wise, like what have you seen? What have you helped people put together? What does it look like? Like, what are they putting online or on their podcast so,

Tim Hull: 5:04

so I mean, there's there's a few different buckets of things that that you can do. One, obviously is sermons, the Sunday sermons are most likely already been recorded. And if they're not, it's usually pretty easy on a on a soundboard to just add that element in there by putting a thumb drive in and hitting record, most soundboards these days have that ability, so you can just capture like that. And then from there, publishing is can be as simple as taking that file and trimming the ins and outs and publishing it. And that way, folks in your, in your community and in your church, that weren't able to make it on Sunday, or were sick, or are shut in, for whatever reason, have access to to listen to the sermons. So that's, that's number one. And it's in the barrier to entry as well, for a listener is different than, okay, I'm going to watch this online, and I've got to find the right spot for that. And you know, most people can figure it out, but there is potentially more steps involved in getting there. Whereas if you have it on your phone, you just hit play. Yeah, that's and that's that I was gonna

Laurie Acker: 6:10

say a lot of churches, like the whole streaming thing on YouTube, and we put all our sermons up and the whole service when you have to, like fast forward to get to the sermon, but if you're actually putting a sermon on a podcast, so convenient, when you're driving, when you're brushing your teeth, when you're whatever, you're just kind of clicking through. I think it's a great way to get sermons out there. Even if it's just to your congregation, like, even if you're not doing a podcast to like reach the world at large. Podcasting is there's a lot of great benefits to it. So other than Sunday sermons, have you seen anybody do things for youth group or even like children's teachings? Like, is that a thing? Like?

Tim Hull: 6:48

Yeah, you know, that's a good question. I'm sure there are another. A ministry that I had on my podcast ministries, that podcast has kids Bible stories, and their podcast is all about creating engaging storytelling, of Bible stories for kids. And so you could do that as a child, a small church, with with your ministry, if you have some, the main thing is if you have somebody that's passionate about creating content for for your ministry, yeah, why not capitalize on that? And say, okay, how can we how can we enhance this? How can we increase awareness? How can we get this out to more people? And so that could be one way to do it, you know, with small, with with children's ministry, or or youth group? If there's, if there's conversations that are being had? Even like, it could it could, I guess it could take multiple forms, right? You could have the preaching from the youth pastor, and it's basically just like the Sunday sermon version, but for the youth, you could do that. Or you could have, you could have conversations with, with people in their peers of like, okay, what are you facing right now? In your school? Yeah. What do you you know, what, what are the conversations that you're having? How have you been able to integrate your faith in the sports that you're playing? You know, any number of things with that, as well, as I've seen some pastors take what they're doing on Sunday morning, and you know, there's always more research, there's always more material that goes into a sermon then actually gets into the Oh,

Laurie Acker: 8:21

almost like a behind the scenes or what you did here? Yeah, exactly.

Tim Hull: 8:24

Yeah, exactly. And so some of those discoveries that like, Yeah, that's interesting. But people would, you know, it wouldn't necessarily be good for a Sunday morning, to spend 10 minutes going through the historical context of this specific thing. Although it's important, I, I'll highlight it in the sermon. But there was so much more that went into that, that I discovered, this week, when I was studying for this, you could have, you could just take those, because those are things that the pastor could just rattle off, like, it's already happening. And so you can just capture that's a format that that has become particularly popular, popular with the Bible project. So what they do is they've been having conversations to create the videos that they create, for their different series is that the different series that they do, and the conversations that they have on their podcast are are literally just, Tim and John, talking through the research that's gone into creating these and John trying to distill down Okay, so what does that mean? And how do we represent that? And so it's just a conversation of, here's what we've learned, and, and asking questions and poking holes and things and trying to understand so that's a great way to go about it too is like the the content surrounding a Sunday sermon. Or even just if you're if you're a pastor, and you're passionate about a specific ministry aspect that you maybe don't get the opportunity to engage in on an on a normal basis with your church. Um, for whatever reason, well, you can record it as a podcast and either be a conversation or just you teaching or talking through something and then have that be an additional resource that isn't taking up multiple people's times, you know, and you have to get people together to have a have a conversation or small group or something. If that's not a thing that you can add to your calendar and try and coordinate all those schedules. Well, you can record it as a podcast and still put it out there and then have those conversations maybe more in pockets than as a as a group. So yeah,

Laurie Acker: 10:34

I love it. There's so many different layers of how much time it would take. And whether you're creating new content or having new conversations, or just recording something that you already did, like I love. So many possibilities are like popping in my mind right now. And in addition to that, Tim, I know, you know that our audience has pastors in it. But we also have a lot of those amazing core volunteers, who are the teachers and the small group leaders. And like, I think there's opportunities here in a lot of multiple ways, and avenues. So we talked a little bit about content. And I could just talk so much longer on that too. But I want to talk I want to have you explain to everyone how easy it is and what it really takes to get a podcast started. And not just get it started. But But to make it good and worth, you know, worth airtime?

Tim Hull: 11:23

Yeah. So to get started with a podcast, there's there's a few main things that you're going to need. One is, what are you going to talk about? And why is it important to the people that you want to reach? And you got it, you got to start with a plan. Otherwise, you're gonna get into it and be like, What should I talk about? On the next episode, you really need to be passionate about the thing that you want to create the podcast around. So that's one start with a plan. And then as far as equipment, frequently, you'll already have the equipment at the church. And there's already microphones, there's probably already some way to record those microphones. And if not, there's there's pretty inexpensive options that are under $100 that you can buy and just plug into your computer and record with free software on your computer. So and a lot of hosting platforms that you then distribute the podcast to Apple podcasts, and Spotify and the rest, even have the ability to record straight into their hosting platform. And you can edit it all together. And there's different options there. But really, the main thing is going to be just figuring out, what do I want to talk about? Why is it important? And how can I then share that with the people that I want to reach? And so it's, it's pretty, it's pretty low cost in that you could spend less than $100 on a microphone if you need to buy a microphone. And then the hosting on an ongoing basis is like maybe like on the high end is probably $20 a month, so

Laurie Acker: 13:24

and so results. So let's say a small church hears this podcast, and they're like, Oh, we're gonna start putting our sermons online, or we're going to start maybe recording some recording some conversations about the sermon topics like something kind of easy. That's, that isn't going to take a whole lot of time. What are the results? Like I was talking about ministry impact, like, we don't need to do more things just for the sake of doing more things. So what kind of results can we get from doing something like this? That would be worth the effort?

Tim Hull: 13:54

Yeah, I think the main thing there is going back to the beginning and cume and building relationships. And so you can look at download numbers, but as a small church, that's that's not necessarily the goal there is to get big numbers. The main thing is, are you reaching the right people? And is it leading to other conversations? Is it leading to community? Because if it's if the, if the what you end up doing is just putting out a bunch of episodes and people saying, oh, yeah, that was great. But they're not doing anything with it. There's not there's the devalue is not there. And so it needs, it needs to be a stepping stone to further conversation. So if it's, if it's a pastor recording the other, you know, the behind the scenes kind of things that go into creating a sermon, well, then have that be one an area or a small group topic that people can talk about? Yeah. So when you have your small groups, you'll listen to the podcast, and you have somebody that's facilitating those. But the content in which you're all listening to every week for that small group discussion, is that podcast. And so it's a resource that that localizes the content as opposed to you know, there's a bunch of there's a bunch of great resources out there that you can, you can go through different books. There's right now media that has a bunch of different different Bible studies and small group studies on there. But you could go deeper with what's already going on in your local church.

Laurie Acker: 15:19

Yeah. I love when you talk about relationships with podcasts because I when I started loving podcasts, it's like I'll take a walk and I'll be like, Hey, I'm taking a walk this morning with my friend Amy and people aren't like who's that I'm like, oh, Amy Porterfield, she gives me all sorts of email marketing advice, you know, but I do, I feel like I'm walking with a friend when I have their podcast in my ears. And I just know that it really it kind of ups that relational Quotient or even some relational trust, because how many people are hanging out with me, before I have makeup on, I'm drinking coffee and brushing my teeth, you know, you know, and it's almost a way of getting into people's living rooms and living space. And they can hear your voice and just kind of be part of that. So I think that relational edge with podcasting is very, very true. And today with all the AI and all the information available, we do want a personal touch. And when you talked about sermons, like on YouTube and stuff, man, I just never do that i because that ties me to my computer, or I'm having to, you know, but but to put a podcast on, like, while I'm driving, it's so much easier. So I think there's just so many layers there. What else were you excited to talk about that I'm missing.

Tim Hull: 16:33

Um, I think just some other pieces too, like you were talking about with, with starting a podcast. The main thing too, that I think I left out was being consistent. So if you're, whether you're publishing the sermons or you're having other conversations that you're publishing, make sure that you're being consistent with how you publish because it is a relationship, and that people have expectations that I'm going to show up and listen to this episode, every Tuesday, or whatever you've set as the frequency. And so you want to make sure that people can expect to keep hearing from you. And so being consistent with that, and also, knowing that, you, you're probably not going to see results right off the bat. That's not what podcasting is about. It's not supposed to be it's not meant to be a viral thing. And now, the big names folks might get that, but you're, you're starting with a recording that then you're getting into people's ears. And over time, the goal would be for them to tell their friends, and I'm gonna tell their friends and you're slowly growing it. And I would say give it a year, if you're serious about it. Take the time, put the plan together, buy the equipment, and say I'm going to do this for a year and see how this goes. And if a year sounds like too much of a commitment, then say okay, I'm going to do this many episodes into a season. And pick a topic that you want to go through or, or do what you would do for a year if you if you thought you could do it, but just condense it. And so there's there's a bunch of different ways you can go about it. But just getting started is frequently the hardest part, it was the hardest part for me was starting my podcast I had, I had an idea for one for years before I ever actually published anything. And so I would say if, if you've if you've got an idea, and you and you're willing to put the time and effort in it, make sure you be consistent and keep showing up for people.

Laurie Acker: 18:25

Okay, so let's take or if your game, I want to give you a couple of scenarios, and let's just play it out the two of us on what this would look like in a small church setting. And we'll take a couple of different positions and titles and people volunteers and paid staff. So let's pretend we've got this by vocational pastor who really wants people to be able to access his sermons he is he's working full time or more than full time plus doing church on top of it. He gives great sermons, they are recorded already. So there are that's already consistent material it's being it's being put out every Sunday. What's the process for him or her to get this live? Does he should should he or she find somebody to put this together for them? Do they need to do it themselves? Kind of play out? How would you advise this pastor? Who has that scenario? What would you tell them to do your best advice?

Tim Hull: 19:17

Yeah, I would say, start off by by talking to the people in your church and say, is anybody doing a podcast that would be interested in volunteering to help us with our podcast at church? Because I can almost guarantee you that somebody will know what to do. There's gonna be a teenager, or there's gonna be, there's gonna be somebody that's like, oh, yeah, I helped a friend with a podcast once and have enough knowledge to look things up online and get get started. And there's got it, there's gonna be somebody that that you can just ask and say, Hey, I'm, we're already recording it, I just, I don't know what to do next. And they can say, I got you. And they'll take it from there, I can almost guarantee that if there's not a teenager in your, in your congregation that would be willing to do that, then there's probably somebody else but I'm guessing the teenagers would probably going to be the place to go the tech savvy guys that, that are into, into that kind of a thing. So it's, I think, just starting there asking around and saying, hey, who can help us with this? And then tell them what you want to do and just just get it published online. I mean, it's, it's a matter of just getting a hosting service and figuring out okay, what makes the most sense for the size that we want? I mean, there's free options out there that might make the most sense to do. And with that it's just a matter of taking the audio file getting it uploaded. There's there's some back end stuff of getting it submitted to Apple and Spotify. But for the most part, the hosting platforms make that pretty easy these days.

Laurie Acker: 20:47

Yeah. And once it's set up, it's it's really set up. So timewise, you're looking for a volunteer, you've never done anything like this. How much time am I asking that person to put into it? Now this is a sermon. So there's no editing, it's just going to be exactly what it is. And we're just putting it up. What would you expect from finding a volunteer? Who kind of knows what they're doing? Or configured out? How much time will that take them each week to get it out there? I

Tim Hull: 21:11

would say 30 minutes or less. There you go. I mean, yeah, so I so with anamorphic, the business that I own, that I help small minutes, some ministries and small businesses with they, there's one of our clients that has a that does this exact thing. They have sermons. And at this point, they're archive sermons, because the the pastor that preached for over 40 years worth of sermons, and now they're going through the archives, and all we're doing is exactly that, we're taking what's already been recorded, putting an intro and outro on it, you can add music, if you want that kind of a thing. But it doesn't, you don't even have to necessarily, and then it's just going to be taking that file making sure it's, I always tell people, you know, you want it to you want it to sound as best as you can. So there's some, there's some different tools out there that are pretty simple that you can run the audio file through to make sure that the levels are at a good and a good spot to make sure the intelligibility is as best as it can be. And so you don't have too much reverb, sometimes that happens in a in a church setting. And so just tweak it's minor tweaks, and then all you have to do is just take that file and upload it. And then from there, it's just titling and show notes. And what, how do we want to present this to make it so that somebody wants to click play on it? And then how can we give people information that if they want to dive deeper from what was talked about in that sermon, that they can have a spot to go click on? Further resources?

Laurie Acker: 22:40

Yep. So basically, if you have weekly content you're already doing find somebody to put it up. It's about a 30 minute commitment on the weekly basis once it's set up. Okay, so let's take another scenario. Yeah, women's ministry, somebody's super excited, they do an annual retreat. And they have, maybe they get some people from the community and other churches who come to their annual retreat. I know many small churches who do this, it is amazing. But in between, there's a vacuum between the two annual retreats and they love these people, they get connected. What could a podcast look like for that women's group? Maybe it's maybe it's interfaith or inter denominational. And maybe it's just this one host church? How could a podcast help keep that kind of connected in between without all the effort of throwing events together? Right.

Tim Hull: 23:25

Yeah, Laurie, that's a great point. Because that that is what happens so frequently, with, with events that happen in a church environment, it's more of an annual thing or, you know, a couple of times a year, and then yeah, there is nothing necessarily in between. And so that can look like, hey, let's take the content that was that was presented at the conference. And let's make that available for people to listen to, and release those, those different talks that were given or conversations that were had on on a stage over the course of several months in between, or you could have conversations that are basically in the same vein that the the conference was and and just take those and it doesn't have to be a huge commitment, I would recommend at least doing two times a month with something or or do seasons and say, okay, the conference happens in the spring, in the fall. So we're gonna put out a season the podcast, in the in the winter in the summer, something of that nature, just just as a as a touch point to keep people being like, oh, yeah, that conference was great. I want to Oh, yeah. She spoke at that conference. I want to hear more about, about what what they do at their church or the ministry that she serves in whatever that could look like. But as I think it'd be great to have have podcasts like that, that help bridge those gaps. Because you're right, there's, there's, there's community that's created by people coming together. And then they go back out. I mean, it's kind of like the, the, the church camp deal that everybody gets, you know, all the youth go to go to the camp and then then they're gone. And all these memories, and then they're gone. Yeah, yeah. And so how do you how do you keep that discipleship going? How do you keep those conversations going? I

Laurie Acker: 25:08

was just gonna talk about you do and I love that you mentioned Podcasts can be seasonal, because a lot of people like they get pretty overwhelmed with the amount of time or the commitment. There's several podcasts I listened to that are 10 minutes long. I love them. They're just like this little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit it's always 10 minutes 10 to 15 minutes max kind of thing and I love it and so you get to pick your commitment, you can say, we have this podcast for a season. So when when Tim mentioned earlier, like, consistent, consistent is so important. If you say it's gonna be weekly, it better be weekly. But if you say it's seasonal, it can be seasonal. If you say this is a 10 Minute drop in little tip for you, it can be that if it's a whole sermon, it can be that. So youth ministry like this was in my mind, it was like, What about conversations with kids questions asked by kids, you know, and just either have a kid on or get the question, right. And just right, this is my answer to youth, and you could even partner with other people in youth ministry for that. What do you think about that? Is that like, too crazy or too? Like, scary to go there? With teens? No,

Tim Hull: 26:16

I? I don't think so. But yeah, they might think otherwise. But I think you know, there are questions that are coming up, that are either conversations that are had at school, or in the locker room or whatever else? And how can you create a safe space to ask those questions, and it can be anonymously, and just have the question and, and either, you know, a volunteer, that's helping disciple in the in the youth group or the youth pastor, be able to answer those questions. Or another thing that I think would be great in this regard to is make it so that it's cross generational of, hey, that the youth have this question. And you have people in your church that are basically grandparent age to them? Yeah, that have been there done that. Could we have the question being asked by the teenager be answered by the grandparent figure, and make that be, you know, kind of bring that together of, hey, there's, there's so much wisdom that is not unlocked from from people that are in your church that have done, you know, they've done life for 40 more years than you have? Potentially. So how can we make it in a way to be accessible to to other folks? And that would be a great avenue of, Hey, these are different conversations about dating, or you know, how to, you know, that's the first one that came to mind, because that was the thing that came to mind when I was in youth group. Oh, my gosh,

Laurie Acker: 27:49

and these days, like dating, anxiety and fear and world events, and things that are really weighing heavily how cool to have an intergenerational mix, like, like, Oh, so cool. And I was thinking also for children's ministry, because we have, like people on fire and children's ministry, like they are like, probably the most passionate people in their whole church, and they are like, but they're thinking, how do I reach more families? Right? Well, people don't come for hot dogs like they used to how do you reach more families? You start podcasts like, what if after like Vacation Bible School where all these families don't come back to church and some people whine about it, but others say, hey, this was great. What if we said, hey, it was so great to have you here we have a podcast with tips, like 10 Minute Tips, Family Togetherness tips, or something that parents can even pop into after like so many opportunities. Tim, you're so excited to have you here today.

Tim Hull: 28:47

Yeah, I mean, there's there's a, there's another show that I work on with anamorphic. That is called car carpool conversations that winshape camps puts out. And it's it's kind of that it's, you know, they put on camps for youth all over the country. And this podcast is meant to be a way for, for moms or parents to, to give them questions to ask of their kids to cool to give them a primer of like, okay, how can we take the take off the table? Just the How was your day? And how do we take that deeper? And not that just asking how your day is not important. But how can we make sure that we're actually connecting with our kids? And how can we find out more what's going on going in? going on in their lives? And and dig into different piece different areas that maybe you wouldn't have normally thought about? But it but because it's on the podcast? Oh, yeah, I should? That's a great question to ask my kids as we're driving home from school.

Laurie Acker: 29:49

Yeah. I'm so excited. I'm also totally aware that this is like one more thing to do. And I want to encourage you, if you're listening, and you're like, all excited about this podcast, when you follow us, we never talked about adding and adding and adding more things to do. What happens though, is when we're excited about something new, and maybe we feel a god direction there. We need to evaluate what we're doing and take something off our plate that we're doing that isn't working. Right. Like when we add good things, it doesn't mean we hang on to everything else. And I I would guess that for the majority of people in small churches now. We're doing plenty of things that aren't working well. Right. We're doing plenty of things that aren't working well. Sometimes we need to let go Go have some of those and try something, try something new that might work differently. So

Tim Hull: 30:38

yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's Yeah. If you if you just ask around on a Wednesday night and say, Okay, what what ministries Do you feel like are going well? And why? I bet people would have opinions. And I

Laurie Acker: 30:52

bet if you said, Who would be excited to be part of a podcast? What if we started a podcast ministry? Like I think, I don't know, there's something about doing something new that we haven't done before. That could really spark some things in different people, whether it is youth ministry, prayer ministry, I listened to podcast sometimes to fall asleep, I will, I will try to find, like, Scripture recordings on different podcasts with different voices. And sometimes they were you know, about, you know, heads being crushed against skulls in, in, in I made against like cliffs in, in Psalms, and I'm like, I don't want to listen to that go into bed. Like, what about like, you know, calming scripture meditations or something? You know, there's so many, there's so many possibilities here, Tim? There,

Tim Hull: 31:35

there really is, there really is. And so really just figuring out who who's passionate about it? And who who's interested in taking that forward? I'm sure there will be people in your congregation that are going to be like, Yeah, I would, I would love the opportunity to take that and run with it. Or a pastor that's like, Yeah, I wish we could do something a little bit different. And this would be a great avenue for Yeah,

Laurie Acker: 31:58

yeah. You know, one of the things you said to me when we first connected Tim was you just wanted people to know that it's easier than they think. Like, this is something within reach. Sometimes when things are outside our experience level, we feel like we could never do that. Like that'd be a great dream. But we could never do that. And you help make it easier for people. How do you do that? I think you have a freebie on your website, even that I saw that we could grab.

Tim Hull: 32:25

Yeah, so that is a little thing that I put together. It's basically like, how can you make sure that if you want to start a podcast, what are some what are some things that you should be mindful of? And it's like record in in a room? That is not really reverberant? It's, it's called, it's referred to in the industry as a dead space. You know, if you think about when you go into a clothes closet, and you're talking, it sounds different than when you're in your kitchen. Yeah. And so it's it's stuff like that, and, and when you're when you're recording your episodes, you should smile, because you can hear a difference. If I if I exaggerate my smile right now, you can tell Yeah. And and if I sound like I don't really care, you can you can tell that I don't really care. And so is some of that, too, is just is just telling you're telling your space to emulate what you're feeling? And have that translate across the across the mic. And so yeah, there's a there's a free download on my website that you can get that just walks through a few different things that are just some tips, as you're getting started to make it the best experience it can be. And

Laurie Acker: 33:24

we'll be sure to like that to drop the link of your website in the show notes. But can you tell everybody what your website is and why it's named what it is?

Tim Hull: 33:32

Yeah, so Sonam morphic.com is the name of it. And that's s o n. I I'm gonna misspell it now. As soon as I say it, I'll probably put it in the show notes. Yeah, Sonam morphic. So and I M O R pH. I see. And that came about though. It's, it's, you know, naming things. It's probably not necessarily the best best idea for for me to name it that it was a cool idea. And then I was like, as I was starting my my my podcasting business, I was like, How can I make this an interesting name that takes you know, audio something and and you take raw audio and you transform it into a polished public polished episode. So I Sana Sana morphic is Sonic, so audio, and then morphic means to change or transform. And so I put it together as like, sound that transforms. And that's how I came up with it. It's probably not the best branding. I

Laurie Acker: 34:34

love it. And I think I love working. I love the the link to like transforming because that's what we talk about all the time that none of us need more information, we need transformation. So I would like to just propose that sun amorphic is a way for your church to transform by using sound like using sound in a new way with podcast can also transform your your reach at your church. So I'm just gonna give you some kudos for that. Because I'm all I'm all on that. So very cool. Well, how can people connect with you is the best way just through your website?

Tim Hull: 35:06

Yeah, so on my website, if you're interested in starting a podcast and want a little I want some advice or wants consulting, you can click on the book a call button that's in the top right. Otherwise I just say listen to my podcast ministries that podcast and get ideas from other ministry leaders that have been podcasting. And in the what how they do what they do. It's basically what I'm doing over there. And so I've had folks on from the Bible project talking about how they To create their podcast I've had Dave Ramsey on I got to get to work with him at Ramsey solutions when I was producing the entree leadership podcast, a lot of fun to have Dave on. And then I talked about kids Bible stories I have them on recently on the podcast, talking about how they've been doing their podcasts for, I believe it's a little over seven years now. And, and all the impact that they've made, through their, through their podcasts and how they've done it over the years. So just getting an opportunity to learn from other people that have gone before you to give you encouragement, if nothing else, that, hey, I can make a podcast and it can be it will be valuable to people. And this is how other people are doing it. Love

Laurie Acker: 36:11

it. Thank you so much, Tim, for being on the show, taking the time and also for sharing your wisdom. So make sure to check out his podcast and its ministries that podcast. So it's just stories of people in ministry podcast. So if you're interested in this at all, gosh, I'll be looking that up also and listening to some more episodes. I think that is so fun. And so cool. And for those of you listening in now, like I don't know, just take this new idea, new thought and maybe it's been a thought that's been in your mind before and have some conversations around it. Because I do think this is an avenue that that ministries who are really reaching out into the world, like, I think we'd be remiss not to consider it. Right. And it may not work in every situation. But I think it's definitely worth the consideration. So and it could end up having a really cool impact not just on those listening, but on those creating it. The conversations that happen as we're making it and forming teams is so cool, too. So, Tim, any last words you have for us?

Tim Hull: 37:09

The only thing I have is I'm wondering if you would share why you started a podcast? Because that's because that's a value. I mean, this is the kind of questions I asked people on my podcast. But I'd love to hear from you. As you encourage your audience on starting a podcast. Why did you start a podcast,

Laurie Acker: 37:26

I started a podcast because my daughter, young adult said, Mom, you have to have a podcast that she just said, Mom, you have to like, this is what people do. This is how you reach people. This is what I listened to. This is what people my age listen to. This makes everything more accessible. She said you just have to have a podcast and I resisted. And she just said Mommy got to do it. And immediately that has had a huge impact on our ministry. It's been huge. It's just been huge. The comments, we get the sharing that happens through the podcast, it was way beyond way beyond what I thought it would be. So I gotta give all the kudos to my daughter who literally just said, Mom, you need to just do this. On top of everything else. This needs to be a priority. And that's that's what happened. That's that's the story.

Tim Hull: 38:13

That's great. Hey, and you're you're doing it? Yeah. So yep.

Laurie Acker: 38:16

And never missed a week for a few years now. Right? Like, yeah, never missed a week. It's the most consistent thing. So yeah. Thanks so much, Tim. Well, it's been great having you on the show. We will I guess that's all we have for today. So we will catch you all next week and until then be alight.